How do you determine whether CPU or GPU bottlenecks?

[hohyss]

How do you determine whether CPU or GPU bottlenecks? Is that based on clock speed?

 

[Billb2]

Slow one down and see if benchmarks change.
Benchmarks worse = No bottlenecking.
Benchmarks same = bottlenecking.
3Dmark works well for this.

 

[JPB]

Keep GPU at stock speeds and overclock cpu. If score raises, id imagine your cpu bottlenecked. If it doesnt raise, your fine.

And vice-versa.

 

[chevmaro]

Can we be gpu bottleknecked any more? I know my 3.0ghz quad core is just not cutting it with my HD4870

 

[onedestinazn2]

play at low resoultions then increase it to a higher resolution and if the fps is the same then youre cpu bottlenecked

 

[deamer44]

Originally posted by: onedestinazn2
play at low resoultions then increase it to a higher resolution and if the fps is the same then youre cpu bottlenecked

can you explain this?

 

[soccerballtux]

So, when you increase the resolution a lot, you're increasing the load on your GPU a lot. If your framerates don't go down after doing this, then that means your GPU at the lower resolution was being underutilized. So, at the lower resolution, your GPU was being underutilized because the CPU couldn't supply data and info to the GPU faster.
The data and info required by the GPU from the CPU is not dependent on resolution, so, if your framerates don't go down when increasing the resolution, your GPU had extra room to render more frames at the lower resolution, but couldn't, because it was waiting on the CPU.

Therefor, you are CPU bottlenecked.